Publication: Great Plains Quarterly, Vol. 501
Author: Waldo R. Wedel
Date of Publication: 1990
PDF File: Weldel-Coronado-Quivira-and-Kansas-An-Archeologists-V.pdf
URL: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/501
Description
Four hundred and forty-nine years ago this summer, the Kansas prairies were visited for the first time by white men. These were a select group of Spanish adventurers from Mexico led by a thirty-year-old nobleman by the name of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado. Francisco was a lad of eleven years when Hernando Cortez looted the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, and sent back to Spain a vast treasure in gold, silver, and precious stones. One of several younger sons, and thus denied by the rule of primogeniture from inheriting any significant share of the family patrimony, Francisco followed the example of many of his contemporaries and headed for the land of promise-the New World.